Literary Review

Our dear friends, the Heftis, have given us much joy over the years in Hong Kong; Kurt especially is a storyteller for the ages. Whatever you do, never let the facts get in the way of a good story!

On our Laos trip last year, he was kind enough to contact a local publisher to get his Magnum Opus printed: The Hefti Book of Incredible Facts. We thought we could perhaps add to sales of this fact-packed pageturner by publishing some reviews. In the spirit of his work, the reviews are entirely fictitious.













"We have many good things to say about The Hefti Book of Incredible Facts; unfortunately the Editor limited us to twenty-five words in this review!"

"Nowadays most media portray everything that is wrong in the world; this gem of a book makes not a single reference to the dark side of human nature, and for that it deserves credit!"

"We were pleasantly surprised to finally come across a book that doesn’t take sides in the Middle East conflict!"

"It was a typhoon 8 day in Hong Kong, and I decided to cuddle up with this book. I have never slept better!"

"It’s environmentally friendly, and may double as toilet paper in a tight spot!"

"You know the type of book that has a nice cover, nice reviews, and you start reading it, but never finish it? It is fair to say that mr Hefti's creation is not like that; in fact I challenge any reader to not read it cover to cover in one sitting!"

"Finally a book about facts that does not mention the failure of the Bush administration!"

"I used Mr Hefti’s book to test my spell-check software, but imagine my surprise when not a single spelling error was found! Well done!"

"I have just put down Examples of Intelligent Thinking in Financial Markets, and found it suspiciously similar in both composition and content to the classic in the genre, Hefti’s Book of Incredible Facts. I wonder if a lawsuit might not be justified. Shameful plagiarism!"

"It has everything you could possibly expect from a book of incredible facts, although this reviewer would have considered adding a few facts. But that’s asking for perfection!"

Ceylon Journal

in which circumstance dictates that your correspondent tones down the lackadaisical style, and reports more earnestly for a change.

Sri Lanka, 6 September – 13 September

Simply gobsmacking. I know I can’t do this island justice, but I’ll try anyway. A couple of days in beautiful Nuwara Eliya, or Little England as the British called it, fooling around in tea plantations and honeysuckle cottages was a good start; among other gems of nature we find Adam’s Peak where muslims and christians alike believe we see Adam's footprint captured as he left the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately for them, the Buddhists believe it is the footprint of the Lord Buddha, and they built a temple first. Tough luck… I can testify to the likeness of Sri Lanka to the traditional image one has of the Garden. Almost impossibly lush and beautiful wherever you look. Note that Nuwara Eliya is pronounced Noo-elia – ‘war’ is silent (!) – or maybe they are too ashamed of their civil war. What is it good for? But greater things were to come.

Tuesday morning I went West to Colombo heading for gorgeous Galle Face Hotel, a drive of no more than 170 km which took us the better part of 5 hours! Not that my driver was the careful type; I don’t think that particular sobriquet would be doing him justice. We did, however, stop a number of times to take in the view. He completely put me in my place after we had stopped at the St Clair waterfalls, where I bought some highland tea, and some spicy popcorn off a little boy. An old scrawny guy came over and showed his prostetic leg asking for money, but I waved him off and looked the other way; we do after all have thirteen to the dozen of those types around Exchange Square in Hong Kong. But my driver quietly digs out 100 rupees (about USD1), hands it to the guy, gets in the car and we drive off. I looked silently at him. “Hum, haw. He had a bad accident. Hrm.. Lost his leg. Bad luck.” He was ashamed at being caught in an act of kindness. But not half as ashamed as I.

Wednesday morning we went and saw a couple of schools built by Room to Read, and it was a very moving experience. Up in the mountains of course nobody had much to say about the dreaded T, the tsunami that hit in Dec 2004, but as we moved south from Colombo, the devastation was unavoidable, and we would hear many gutwrenching stories over the next couple of days. I was accompanied by a Kuwaiti woman, Hind Al Adwani, who was researching various Asian charity projects for her employer, a Kuwaiti property company, and we were yakking away from the word go; the RtR guide didn’t get a word in all day. Suffice it to say she was not your stereotype Kuwaiti… She ponders some RtR work in Oman, and I must confess I would like to participate somehow. A few red and white flags would do no harm to the Muslim/Danish bilateral relationship.

The teachers were an absolute revelation, and of course the kids were sweetness defined. The boys were shy, until you throw them a couple of cricket comments, “you look like a batsman, son, am I right?”, and then they explode in chatter. One slight beef I have with RtR is that, while the libraries of course are for everybody, the primary schools they support are for girls only. This is a source of some friction within families since boys are therefore denied the opportunities their sisters receive. I understand the arguments – that in some countries girls are actively discriminated against – but that’s not the case in Sri Lanka. It’s not difficult to appeal to fat Western bankers with images of smiling brown girls with long pig-tails in white uniforms, but it is just a little bit too easy. Anyway, I’m probably just grumpy, and of course the results speak for themselves. I especially appreciated meeting the science teacher at the library in Matara; she had good eyes, and was clearly not to be trifled with! The school we visited near Galle was a pre-school for uprooted T-victims, who lived in a group of solid German built houses nearby, but there was a competing pre-school right next door, built by some other INGO (international non-government organisation). There is precious little coordination – everybody wants to do good, and I suppose two half-full schools side by side is better than none.

The next day I was met with more evidence of devastation; a train with 700 passengers had been smashed to pieces, no survivors. Whole villages were completely obliterated. Everybody had a heart-wrenching story to tell. My guide and Tuk-tuk driver Ranga took me to a turtle hatchery where a fine, proud old man named Amaraseno Fernando had bought turtle eggs off the fishermen for 45 years and hatched them in his garden, then set them out to sea again. He knew his trade. We saw two albino turtles: “One albino for every half a million turtles.” And some turtles born blind: “One blind for every 3,000 turtles.” Pure Mendelian genetic studies. You can imagine how many turtles Fernando has assisted as a mid-woman, and he must have yanked the survival rate significantly over the traditional one in a hundred that Nature usually achieves. His assistant explained that the turtles were in Sri Lanka before people came, so it was rightfully their island; that gives Fernando and his team the responsibility to look after them. But they had been hit by the T as well; he explained to me what had happened, how they had watched the water rise about 2m following the first wave, then grabbed all the big turtles and carried them to safety up in the hills while half their village were sucked out to sea by the undercurrent as the second, bigger wave crashed in and then retreated. He showed me a photo of a school class from next door, and pointed out three faces. “They died?” I asked. “No, they survived. All the others were sucked out.” He had written a song about that day, which he proceeded to sing. It was in Singhalese, so I didn’t understand the words, but when he got to the last line I had to swallow hard. Forget the words; there was no mistaking his body language, intonation and eyes. His assistant translated for me afterwards. The last line was about how the children were the last to be sucked out to sea, and as they were, he could see them waving to their surviving relatives on shore.

To lighten things up a bit, Ranga then took me on a river safari with a botanically inclined friend. I was a complete disgrace as they asked me to name various plants we came across in the wild on the lake and its 64 islands. In order of appearance: Coconut (got that!), breadfruit, almond tree, mimosa (makahya, or Shy Flower, in Tagalog, knew that one), lemongrass, ginger, lime tree, cinnamon, aloe, mango tree (got that, too!), olives (nah, local species), vanilla, and marijuana!! Then it was time to be humiliated in fauna as well: varans, cormorans, kingfishers, (got it!), fish eagles, even a mongoose scampering across a narrow bridge. And at the Buddhist monastery on the island in the middle of the lake, I had a brief encounter with another mammal:

Hello, Mister Rat. Didn’t know your kind could live in a tree.

Sir. What are you saying? I’m a squirrel.

You’re a rat with a bushy tail.

Sir, I take offence. I am cute. I am cuddly. Kids love me.

You’re a rat with a good public relations officer. Tell me what you eat.

I eat only the finest fruits and nuts. I polish my whiskers after I have eaten. I say grace.

You’re still a rat.

Sir, you do me the gravest injustice. My ancestors fought the Dutch! Their ancestors fought the Portuguese!!

In the gutter. Or sewage system more like. What did you do, bite them in the bottom? How many babies do you produce?

Well, my good lady wife and I have been extraordinarily blessed. We have seventeen off-spring.

See? You’re a rat.

Take caution in your tone, sir. You have been warned.

Rat!

Squirrel!

Rat!

Sir, I shall not hesitate to bite if subjected to any more of this provocation.

Rat. Rat rat rat.

Right. That’s your final warning.

Your ancestors brought the plague to Europe in the 14th and the 17th century.

That’s it! One more word, and I’ll take you out, I swear.

Other than uppity squirrels, we were treated to an 1850s version of the teachings of Buddha written on palm leaves, plus a barge a la Sri Lanka; they literally dived 10 meters down to the bottom of the lake and came back with bucket upon bucket of what we in Denmark call ‘slam’, but let’s pretend we’re housetrained and call it sand – apparently highly valued in the construction business. It’s incredibly hard work so they fortify themselves with arrack all day. I believe there are vacancies just now.

Whether by chance or design we had saved the best for last as the botanical genius slowly pulled in to Cinnamon Island (population: 2). Here a fine old gentleman gave an expert demonstration of what cinnamon business is all about.

• Take a branch from the cinnamon tree;
• boil the leaves; for every 500 kg about 750 ml of cinnamon oil may be extracted;
• scrape off the bark which may be used as fertilizer since it binds nitrogen in the soil; the bark is very pungent, filling the air with the familiar kanel smell;
• now cut the layer just underneath the bark carefully with a specially designed knife and lay it to dry suspended on coconut ropes under the roof – these are the cinnamon sticks familiar to most Europeans;
• the branch is used as firewood;
• just to show off, in 45 seconds flat he rolled the fibers of coconut tusks into a strong rope, and meshed coconut leaves into the material they use to thatch their huts while we were gaping at his skills.

We were given samples of his work throughout, and I was reeking of cinnamon like an English Christmas Pudding by the time we boarded the boat to return to base. One thing that did strike me about the whole performance was how his son was watching proudly from behind the hut where we sat. Is this life, in the words of Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short? It certainly didn’t seem that way; the pressure to move to Colombo, and from there to Trevandrum, Bangalore, London and New York was happily absent.

But here we are. The people of Sri Lanka have managed to put the big T behind them. But I am frankly shattered listening to their stories almost four years after it hit. I am usually the grateful owner of a light heart; it gained a few pounds on this trip.

Montesquieu in Tung Chung

French enlightenment thinker Montesquieu (1689-1755) famously warned politicians against adding unnecessary laws, since those are bound to undermine respect for the truly necessary ones. He is unfortunately not widely read, certainly not amongst the Tung Chung town planners.
Or maybe my big, swollen head has failed to understand the traffic conditions that require that bicycles must make their own way in the left-hand lane while the rider walks in the right-hand lane. Riding on the bicycle is clearly not permitted.